(Van loaded with dogs and cats leaving from Winnsboro, South Carolina on September 12th)

(September 13, 2018 – Asheville, North Carolina) – Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, a No Kill animal rescue organization based in Asheville, North Carolina, has been working steadily for days to help North and South Carolina shelters evacuate their animals ahead of hurricane Florence.

“We started getting some pretty desperate calls for help from rural Carolina shelters on Sunday morning.” says Audrey Lodato, Director of Animal Care for Brother Wolf. “We knew right away that these shelters were in trouble. They didn’t have a way to get their animals safe and they didn’t have any place for them to go.” Working quickly, the Brother Wolf team found receiving partner shelters for the animals in places as far north as New York and as far south as Florida. They then dispatched multiple vans to the shelters to pick up the animals and drove them to safety at the partner facilities, where they will be placed up for adoption.

Brother Wolf says that evacuating shelters likely to be affected by a natural disaster serves two purposes; It gets the animals that are already in the shelter looking for homes out of harm’s way, and makes space for incoming animals who have been lost in the storm, giving their families time to find them. “Making space ahead of time for displaced animals is crucial to getting these animals back to their owners.” said Eric Phelps, Brother Wolf’s Field Operations Manager. “Without a safe place for the shelters to keep them, they are at risk of being euthanized. We want to make sure we help as many as we can get home where they belong.”

The receiving rescues and shelter have also been working around the clock to keep space open for the animals coming in. Becky Tegze, Executive Director at Pets Alive in Middletown, New York, says “Animals are coming in at odd hours because the Brother Wolf vans are trying to go as fast as they can to get up and back as any times as possible. We’ve been receiving animals in the middle of the night and that’s fine with us. We’re really glad we are able to help get these animals safe and find them good homes.”

To date, Brother Wolf has evacuated animals from three different Carolina facilities in Harnett County, North Carolina, and Horry and Fairfield Counties in South Carolina. Brother Wolf has been transporting the animals to ten rescue partners located in the Hudson Valley area of New York and to Fort Myers, Florida. Brother Wolf plans to continue their work transporting animals through the aftermath of the storm. Donations for this work, which costs Brother Wolf thousands of dollars to conduct, are gratefully accepted at www.BWAR.org/donate.

###

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue, located in Asheville, NC, was founded in 2007 to provide the resources and life-saving programs to help build No-Kill communities. As a grassroots organization, Brother Wolf believes strongly in community engagement and making it easy to adopt, volunteer and become involved in its No-Kill mission. BWAR’s No Kill Community Development Initiative is currently working with four chapters to implement life-saving programs and build their own No-Kill communities. Celebrating 10 years, Brother Wolf broke ground in 2017 at its Sanctuary location 25 minutes from Asheville. The Sanctuary will be a place for people and animals to heal, as well as focus on working towards the vision of Uncompromised Compassion for all animals.